You missed? Stepping up again is the only answer
ISTEP away from my t eam- mates on t he halfway line and head t o wards the goal. Making his way from the l eft i s Iker Casillas, Spain’s goalkeeper. I don’t see hi m. I don’t see anything.
Not one of the best keepers in the world circa 2002. Not the goal. Not the 70,000 i n the Suwon Stadium, although the scene behind the goal is a blur of green.
I just want to know where the ball is. In my mind I go through the penalty kick to beat Casillas and get us to the quarter-finals. The quarter-finals. Beyond our wildest dreams. I try to get it all out of my head.
From the day we joined up for the World Cup in Dublin, we practised penalties after every session. Mick McCarthy got some stick for saying, in his usual blunt and honest way, that he never saw the point. And he was right. You can never replicate the pressure of the real thing.
The competition is always fierce in training. Believe me, I have seen penalty competitions nearly come to blows and some festering resentments. Goalkeepers don’t like conceding penalties. Ever.
‘I felt I had let everyone down’
Especially Shay Given. And especially if the penalty taker tries to take the mickey, or tries something they would never try in a game, such as the Pirlo chip.
At the end of those sessions in Ireland, England, Saipan, Japan and South Korea, I’d usually drill the ball with power to the keeper’s left. Yet when it came to hitting that ball in Suwon that night, for a place in the quarter-finals, I tried to place it and didn’t get the right connection. I don’t know why. But I do know Casillas saved it.
I don’t think there was a lower point in my career, certainly not an occasion I felt I had let so many people down. The words of consolation from Mick, my team-mates, friends and family took a while to sink in.
Six months later, an FA Cup tie with Sunderland against Blackburn Rovers and we went to a penalty shoot- out. I’d never shirked one before and I made sure I took one, going second after Kevin Phillips. And I made sure I scored, striking the ball cleanly, powerfully, to Brad Friedel’s left. We won 3-0.
That helped bury the memory of South Korea for me. And the players who missed in the Capital One Cup semi-final at Old Trafford on Wednesday must step up again the next time they are in a penalty shoot-out.
If ever an occasion proved that the pressure of penalties gets to players it was surely on Wednesday night. Ten penalties, only three scored, and players who you would expect to bury the ball in the back of the net, missed.
When Craig Gardner stepped up as Sunderland’s first penalty taker it made complete sense. He can strike a ball, he has arguably the best technique in the Sunderland team, which is why he takes freekicks and he is a confident player at set pieces. And he put his shot over the bar.
Steven Fletcher, a striker who hits the ball sweetly normally, barely managed to hit the goal- line. Danny Welbeck and Phil Jones missed the target and Adnan Januzaj, arguably the one Manchester United player who has played with real confidence all season for one so young, hit a weak penalty that Vito Mannone saved easily.
One other player who has had to come to terms with the pain of missing a vital penalty is Crystal Palace striker Jason Puncheon,
‘You can’t replicate the pressure’
who found his own way to get over the disappointment last week.
His penalty against Spurs was one of the worst the Barclays Premier League has seen and understandably some people were quick to take the mickey out of him. And that’s inevitable when you hit one as wildly as he did a fortnight ago.
Pundits, ex-players and even his former manager Neil Warnock had a go at him, and I can understand why he was upset at the attention he got for a few days. On reflection, he would be laughing himself if he had seen someone else take such a wild and poor a penalty.
Although Palace manager Tony Pulis was upset immediately afterwards, he stood by Puncheon, who is a very talented player. There was never any doubt about him playing Pulis’ former team Stoke City last week. And Puncheon backed his faith by scoring the winner.
The aftermath of that penalty mi s s was obviously not particularly nice for Jason. Many of us saw his reaction on Twitter, and he did bite to the criticism and the ‘jokes’.
David Moyes always used to tell us that it takes courage to step over that white line because you are vulnerable, especially when things go wrong. But it is still the best way of answering the critics.